Image by Andrew Reilly via Flickr
by W.R. Zammichiéli
Writer, Dandelion Salad
July 31, 2020
“Every State is a dictatorship.” — Antonio Gramsci
(Part Two of an Ongoing Series: The Four Fundamental Freedoms of Libertarian Socialism) [Part 1]
Image by Daniel Arrhakis via Flickr
with David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, July 24, 2020
with Bruce Gagnon
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Organizing Notes
July 30, 2020
WorldBeyondWar.org on Jul 24, 2020
David Swanson, Alice Slater, and Bruce Gagnon discuss obstacles to nuclear abolition and the U.S.-Russia relationship.
Image by fabulousfabs via Flickr
by Yanis Iqbal
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Aligarh, India
July 29, 2020
Amid the current Covid-19 pandemic, the Garifuna community of Honduras is experiencing state-sponsored violence and regulated repression. On July 18, 2020, heavily armed personnel of the Police Investigation Department (DPI) barged into the house of Alberth Sneider Centeno, Garifuna president of the land community of El Triunfo de la Cruz, and abducted him. Later, the same armed group kidnapped Suami Aparicio Mejía García, Gerardo Mizael Rochez Cálix and Milton Joel Martínez Álvarez, members of the OFRANEH (Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras), and a fifth person, Junior Rafael Juárez Mejía. The General Confederation of Labor (CGT) has issued a statement saying “that the kidnapping of these people is motivated by the activity of the Garifuna people in defense of their ancestral lands and the rights of Afro-indigenous and indigenous people in these territories.”
Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist, July 27, 2020
July 28, 2020
Last week, when the billionaire neo-colonialist Elon Musk was confronted on Twitter about how his company is benefiting from the Washington-perpetrated coup in Bolivia, he replied with a statement that encapsulates the ugly nakedness of current U.S. imperialism: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” I have a feeling that when the world looks back on 2020, the time when the U.S. lashed out with such great violence when faced with its imperial decline, Musk’s declaration will be seen as the moment when the mask of the empire came off.
Image by Jürgen Mangelsdorf via Flickr
by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from Sputnik
July 27, 2020
Washington’s arrogance is so out of control it has become impossibly absurd. It is astounding just how “exceptional” American politicians are at spouting double-think and contradictions without even the slightest shame or self-awareness.
Image by Rae Allen via Flickr
by W.R. Zammichiéli
Writer, Dandelion Salad
July 26, 2020
The ideology of capitalism is indistinguishable from the ideology of the cancer cell — unlimited growth for the purposes of infinite expansion within a finite reality.
(Part One of an Ongoing Series: The Four Fundamental Freedoms of Libertarian Socialism)
Image by TonyaHennessey via Flickr
with Chris Hedges
RT America on Jul 25, 2020
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to comics journalist Joe Sacco about his new book, Paying the Land. In the book, Sacco travels to the frozen Canadian Northwest Territories to reveal the Dene people in conflict over the costs and benefits of the resource extraction industry and development.
Image by Lee Bosher via Flickr
by Yanis Iqbal
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Aligarh, India
July 25, 2020
At Cerrejon (Colombia), the largest open-pit coal mine in Latin America owned equally by BHP (Australia), Anglo American PLC (United Kingdom) and Glencore (Switzerland), the situation of the indigenous people is progressively worsening. Cerrejon Limited has informed the workers that “all the existing shifts will be unified into a single 7-day work, for three days off.” With the enforcement of the new shifts, “workers would go from working 15 to 21 days and the mine would go from 4 to 3 shifts, leaving at least 25% of the current workforce unemployed.” The new shift pattern is likely to aggravate the health of workers as long working hours increase the number of work-related pathologies. Current work shift arrangements have already led to more than “700 pathologies associated with musculoskeletal, respiratory, cardiovascular and ear diseases, among others.” As the level of work becomes more stressful, these occupational diseases will start multiplying.
Image by Hunter Desportes via Flickr
with Will Griffin
Writer, Dandelion Salad
July 24, 2020
Regis Tremblay on Jul 21, 2020
This is Will Griffin’s account of his service in the U.S. Army with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, his subsequent questioning of why he was there and what America was really doing around the world. This led to traveling to a dozen countries, including Russia, to find out for himself what the effects of U.S. militarism were on people around the world. He created the Peace Report, a Youtube channel where he shares his views, stories, and insights.
Image by The All-Nite Images via Flickr
by Rainer Shea
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Rainer Shea: Anti-Imperialist Journalist
July 23, 2020
Consider the scenario presented by the TV series Mr. Robot, wherein a group of hackers aims to take down the giant conglomerate E Corp-known by the head hacker Elliot Alderson as Evil Corp. To put an end to Evil Corp’s hegemonic control over finance, the hackers sabotage its ability to keep count of how much debt people owe it. When the first big digital attack happens in the show’s universe in 2015, Evil Corp is struggling, hundreds of billions of dollars have been lost, the public is protesting Evil Corp over its failures to provide for society’s needs, and the capitalist world is falling into a depression.
Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Updated: Added a “Take Action” July 23, 2020
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, July 21, 2020
July 22, 2020
The U.S. House of Misrepresentatives on Tuesday voted 324 to 93 (with 13 not voting) to defeat a proposal to move a mere 10% of military spending to human, environmental, and health needs. The 324 people who voted the wrong way on this really should never show their faces in public again. Our society ought to shame them so deeply that they pick up and move to a country with healthcare and retirement and clean energy and a decent education system where they can discover what they’ve been depriving the United States of, as well as discover what they’ve been inflicting on the world. Certainly, nobody should ever vote to elect any of them again.
Image by @Chile_Satelital via Flickr
by Yanis Iqbal
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Aligarh, India
July 21, 2020
As Chile gets convulsed by the aggravating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the structural brutality of copper mining is being starkly outlined. At Codelco or the National Copper Corporation of Chile, approximately 3,000 workers have been infected with Coronavirus and El Teniente and Chuquicamata are the hardest hit regions with 1,044 and 636 cases, respectively. In June itself, unionized workers had reported the suspect deaths of 3 workers and had demanded a proper investigation. Codelco peacefully airbrushed these cases by saying that the workers contracted the virus from an outside area. Chile´s Federation of Copper Workers (FTC), in response to the sheer carelessness and profit-mindedness of Codelco, stated that “It is unacceptable that Codelco’s senior management tries to evade its legal responsibilities to protect … the health and safety of its workers.”
Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
Watch the video-tweets below
by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
July 20, 2020
“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” — Vladimir Lenin
Between 1973 and 1990 scores of people were disappeared by the US supported fascist regime of Augusto Pinochet in Chile. They were incarcerated, tortured and thousands were murdered. In fact, the official total of those killed by the regime is just over 40,000. But some critics suggest it was much higher. Pinochet was able to do all of this with the blessing of the CIA who assisted him in the coup against the elected President, Salvador Allende, and in his reign of terror afterward in Chile. The painful lessons of the Pinochet years has often been obscured under neoliberal historical revisionism, but with what is currently unfolding in cities like Portland, Oregon, it is urgent to revisit them.
Image by Anarchimedia via Flickr
This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
ARTE Documentary on ~ Jun 30, 2020
The ‘Operation Hotel’ revelations back in 2018 revealed that the Ecuadorian government was spying on Julian Assange, taking refuge in their London embassy at the time. But recent evidence from Spanish authorities suggests that it was in fact American intelligence that sponsored the surveillance. With the USA currently trying to extradite Assange from his London prison to be tried for the disclosure of hundreds of thousands of top-secret documents on WikiLeaks, the global Assange story, murkier than ever, is ongoing.
Image by Tony Webster via Flickr
with Chris Hedges
RT America on Jul 18, 2020
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to activist and writer Philip McHarris, on the latest calls for police reform in the U.S.
